watching, reading, and writing stories

Ready Player One

by lydiamhill on April 9, 2018

This past weekend I got to see Ready Player One in theaters. I haven’t read the book and all I knew about the story was what I’d seen from the previews: There’s this future world where everyone hangs out online in this virtual world, for work and pleasure. The person who created the virtual world, called the Oasis has died and left a treasure hunt in the world so that whoever follows the clues and finds the Easter Egg first wins control of the whole game.

If you’re interested, here’s a preview:

It was an intriguing set up and I was excited to see how the movie would play out. I really enjoyed seeing all of the visual effects and the references to pop culture, though I’m sure I missed half of them. I also really enjoyed the characters and how their online avatars were similar to their real selves, but often different in surprising ways. And the plot was very engaging and had plenty of twists and turns that were fun to watch.

The movie made me think about how much of our current world is tied to the internet and being online and how a virtual world like the one in the movie doesn’t seem too far from the future. But the movie gave a great message of remembering the importance of reality, and that even though the online world is fun or exciting, real life and real human interaction is important too.

So I would recommend this movie, it has a lot of action, some comedy, and sometimes the sense of a mystery or heist movie as well. It was very enjoyable to watch, except for the Shining portion of the film. I just don’t like horror films, so that part was a little too creepy for me. But the rest of it was really fun and interesting. And even if you’ve already seen it, it seems like the kind of movie you could watch again and again, just to find more of the less obvious references spread throughout the film.